Seoul Mates: May 2007

Lanterns.

Sunday was the Lotus Lantern Festival in Seoul, to celebrate Buddhas Birthday.
Happy Birthday, Budds!

There were a lot of lanterns, as you might expect at a Lantern Festival.

I dare you to name a religion with a cuter mascot:

I'm totally converting. Buddhists are cool.

Pig headed

There was a cermony a few weeks ago at my school to give an auspicious start to the new greenhouses and welcome the new animals at the school. We had a sports day for the teachers, and then there was the ceremony. There were offerings on the table of fruit and a pig's head, and people lit incense, bowed, and waved bowls of maccoli around (Maccoli is Korean alcohol).

And then the teachers put money in the pig's mouth (or in his nose sometimes). I don't know what they use the money for. I don't really care, either, because I put in 10,000 won that somebody else gave me, since I didn't have my wallet with me. They can do whatever they want with the money in that case.

The bigger the smile on the pig's face, the more expensive the head is!!

A long day.

Today I came back to Korea from Hong Kong. It was sad to leave, because there was lots I more to do there. But on the positive side, I did get to spend like six hours at the Hong Kong airport, voted the world's best airport from 2001-2005!!

There was a nice view from the waiting area.
"But Morgan! Why were you at the airport for six hours?!" Well, funny you should ask...
First, it turns out that our tickets were for May 5th, and today was, in fact, May 6th. So that was a slight problem. But the airline was quite understanding, actually, and booked us on another flight. They were less understanding of Johan's single-entry visa to Korea, though. That and his terrorist ties... It took us two hours to get Johan's ticket, because the flight attendants were a bit too thorough in their jobs. Johan only has a single-entry visa to Korea, because he was told he didn't need a multiple-entry visa, but then they said he had to show a return ticket out of Korea, yada, yada, yada.... It was all very complicated, and the shoe bomb Johan had "just to see if he could get away with it" didn't help matters. But we made it home eventually... to Incheon! The 5th best airport in the world in 2006!! Woo!
Goodbye Hong Kong.